Solidity is a statically typed language, which means that the type of each
variable (state and local) needs to be specified (or at least known -
see Type Deduction below) at
compile-time. Solidity provides several elementary types which can be combined
to form complex types.

In addition, types can interact with each other in expressions containing
operators. For a quick reference of the various operators, see Order of Precedence of Operators.

int / uint: Signed and unsigned integers of various sizes. Keywords uint8 to uint256 in steps of 8 (unsigned of 8 up to 256 bits) and int8 to int256. uint and int are aliases for uint256 and int256, respectively.

Division always truncates (it is just compiled to the DIV opcode of the EVM), but it does not truncate if both
operators are literals (or literal expressions).

Division by zero and modulus with zero throws a runtime exception.

The result of a shift operation is the type of the left operand. The
expression x<<y is equivalent to x*2**y, and x>>y is
equivalent to x/2**y. This means that shifting negative numbers
sign extends. Shifting by a negative amount throws a runtime exception.

Warning

The results produced by shift right of negative values of signed integer types is different from those produced
by other programming languages. In Solidity, shift right maps to division so the shifted negative values
are going to be rounded towards zero (truncated). In other programming languages the shift right of negative values
works like division with rounding down (towards negative infinity).

Fixed point numbers are not fully supported by Solidity yet. They can be declared, but
cannot be assigned to or from.

fixed / ufixed: Signed and unsigned fixed point number of various sizes. Keywords ufixedMxN and fixedMxN, where M represents the number of bits taken by
the type and N represents how many decimal points are available. M must be divisible by 8 and goes from 8 to 256 bits. N must be between 0 and 80, inclusive.
ufixed and fixed are aliases for ufixed128x19 and fixed128x19, respectively.

Operators:

Comparisons: <=, <, ==, !=, >=, > (evaluate to bool)

Arithmetic operators: +, -, unary -, unary +, *, /, % (remainder)

Note

The main difference between floating point (float and double in many languages, more precisely IEEE 754 numbers) and fixed point numbers is
that the number of bits used for the integer and the fractional part (the part after the decimal dot) is flexible in the former, while it is strictly
defined in the latter. Generally, in floating point almost the entire space is used to represent the number, while only a small number of bits define
where the decimal point is.

If x is a contract address, its code (more specifically: its fallback function, if present) will be executed together with the transfer call (this is a feature of the EVM and cannot be prevented). If that execution runs out of gas or fails in any way, the Ether transfer will be reverted and the current contract will stop with an exception.

send

Send is the low-level counterpart of transfer. If the execution fails, the current contract will not stop with an exception, but send will return false.

Warning

There are some dangers in using send: The transfer fails if the call stack depth is at 1024
(this can always be forced by the caller) and it also fails if the recipient runs out of gas. So in order
to make safe Ether transfers, always check the return value of send, use transfer or even better:
use a pattern where the recipient withdraws the money.

call, callcode and delegatecall

Furthermore, to interface with contracts that do not adhere to the ABI,
the function call is provided which takes an arbitrary number of arguments of any type. These arguments are padded to 32 bytes and concatenated. One exception is the case where the first argument is encoded to exactly four bytes. In this case, it is not padded to allow the use of function signatures here.

call returns a boolean indicating whether the invoked function terminated (true) or caused an EVM exception (false). It is not possible to access the actual data returned (for this we would need to know the encoding and size in advance).

It is possible to adjust the supplied gas with the .gas() modifier:

namReg.call.gas(1000000)("register","MyName");

Similarly, the supplied Ether value can be controlled too:

nameReg.call.value(1ether)("register","MyName");

Lastly, these modifiers can be combined. Their order does not matter:

nameReg.call.gas(1000000).value(1ether)("register","MyName");

Note

It is not yet possible to use the gas or value modifiers on overloaded functions.

A workaround is to introduce a special case for gas and value and just re-check
whether they are present at the point of overload resolution.

In a similar way, the function delegatecall can be used: the difference is that only the code of the given address is used, all other aspects (storage, balance, …) are taken from the current contract. The purpose of delegatecall is to use library code which is stored in another contract. The user has to ensure that the layout of storage in both contracts is suitable for delegatecall to be used. Prior to homestead, only a limited variant called callcode was available that did not provide access to the original msg.sender and msg.value values.

All three functions call, delegatecall and callcode are very low-level functions and should only be used as a last resort as they break the type-safety of Solidity.

The .gas() option is available on all three methods, while the .value() option is not supported for delegatecall.

Note

All contracts inherit the members of address, so it is possible to query the balance of the
current contract using this.balance.

Note

The use of callcode is discouraged and will be removed in the future.

Warning

All these functions are low-level functions and should be used with care.
Specifically, any unknown contract might be malicious and if you call it, you
hand over control to that contract which could in turn call back into
your contract, so be prepared for changes to your state variables
when the call returns.

Index access: If x is of type bytesI, then x[k] for 0<=k<I returns the k th byte (read-only).

The shifting operator works with any integer type as right operand (but will
return the type of the left operand), which denotes the number of bits to shift by.
Shifting by a negative amount will cause a runtime exception.

Members:

.length yields the fixed length of the byte array (read-only).

Note

It is possible to use an array of bytes as byte[], but it is wasting a lot of space, 31 bytes every element,
to be exact, when passing in calls. It is better to use bytes.

As a rule of thumb, use bytes for arbitrary-length raw byte data and string
for arbitrary-length string (UTF-8) data. If you can limit the length to a certain
number of bytes, always use one of bytes1 to bytes32 because they are much cheaper.

Hexadecimal literals that pass the address checksum test, for example
0xdCad3a6d3569DF655070DEd06cb7A1b2Ccd1D3AF are of address type.
Hexadecimal literals that are between 39 and 41 digits
long and do not pass the checksum test produce
a warning and are treated as regular rational number literals.

Integer literals are formed from a sequence of numbers in the range 0-9.
They are interpreted as decimals. For example, 69 means sixty nine.
Octal literals do not exist in Solidity and leading zeros are invalid.

Decimal fraction literals are formed by a . with at least one number on
one side. Examples include 1., .1 and 1.3.

Scientific notation is also supported, where the base can have fractions, while the exponent cannot.
Examples include 2e10, -2e10, 2e-10, 2.5e1.

Number literal expressions retain arbitrary precision until they are converted to a non-literal type (i.e. by
using them together with a non-literal expression).
This means that computations do not overflow and divisions do not truncate
in number literal expressions.

For example, (2**800+1)-2**800 results in the constant 1 (of type uint8)
although intermediate results would not even fit the machine word size. Furthermore, .5*8 results
in the integer 4 (although non-integers were used in between).

Any operator that can be applied to integers can also be applied to number literal expressions as
long as the operands are integers. If any of the two is fractional, bit operations are disallowed
and exponentiation is disallowed if the exponent is fractional (because that might result in
a non-rational number).

Note

Solidity has a number literal type for each rational number.
Integer literals and rational number literals belong to number literal types.
Moreover, all number literal expressions (i.e. the expressions that
contain only number literals and operators) belong to number literal
types. So the number literal expressions 1+2 and 2+1 both
belong to the same number literal type for the rational number three.

Warning

Division on integer literals used to truncate in earlier versions, but it will now convert into a rational number, i.e. 5/2 is not equal to 2, but to 2.5.

Note

Number literal expressions are converted into a non-literal type as soon as they are used with non-literal
expressions. Even though we know that the value of the
expression assigned to b in the following example evaluates to
an integer, but the partial expression 2.5+a does not type check so the code
does not compile

String literals are written with either double or single-quotes ("foo" or 'bar'). They do not imply trailing zeroes as in C; "foo" represents three bytes not four. As with integer literals, their type can vary, but they are implicitly convertible to bytes1, …, bytes32, if they fit, to bytes and to string.

String literals support escape characters, such as \n, \xNN and \uNNNN. \xNN takes a hex value and inserts the appropriate byte, while \uNNNN takes a Unicode codepoint and inserts an UTF-8 sequence.

Hexademical Literals are prefixed with the keyword hex and are enclosed in double or single-quotes (hex"001122FF"). Their content must be a hexadecimal string and their value will be the binary representation of those values.

Hexademical Literals behave like String Literals and have the same convertibility restrictions.

Enums are one way to create a user-defined type in Solidity. They are explicitly convertible
to and from all integer types but implicit conversion is not allowed. The explicit conversions
check the value ranges at runtime and a failure causes an exception. Enums needs at least one member.

pragmasolidity^0.4.16;contracttest{enumActionChoices{GoLeft,GoRight,GoStraight,SitStill}ActionChoiceschoice;ActionChoicesconstantdefaultChoice=ActionChoices.GoStraight;functionsetGoStraight()public{choice=ActionChoices.GoStraight;}// Since enum types are not part of the ABI, the signature of "getChoice"// will automatically be changed to "getChoice() returns (uint8)"// for all matters external to Solidity. The integer type used is just// large enough to hold all enum values, i.e. if you have more values,// `uint16` will be used and so on.functiongetChoice()publicviewreturns(ActionChoices){returnchoice;}functiongetDefaultChoice()publicpurereturns(uint){returnuint(defaultChoice);}}

Function types are the types of functions. Variables of function type
can be assigned from functions and function parameters of function type
can be used to pass functions to and return functions from function calls.
Function types come in two flavours - internal and external functions:

Internal functions can only be called inside the current contract (more specifically,
inside the current code unit, which also includes internal library functions
and inherited functions) because they cannot be executed outside of the
context of the current contract. Calling an internal function is realized
by jumping to its entry label, just like when calling a function of the current
contract internally.

External functions consist of an address and a function signature and they can
be passed via and returned from external function calls.

In contrast to the parameter types, the return types cannot be empty - if the
function type should not return anything, the whole returns(<returntypes>)
part has to be omitted.

By default, function types are internal, so the internal keyword can be
omitted. In contrast, contract functions themselves are public by default,
only when used as the name of a type, the default is internal.

There are two ways to access a function in the current contract: Either directly
by its name, f, or using this.f. The former will result in an internal
function, the latter in an external function.

If a function type variable is not initialized, calling it will result
in an exception. The same happens if you call a function after using delete
on it.

If external function types are used outside of the context of Solidity,
they are treated as the function type, which encodes the address
followed by the function identifier together in a single bytes24 type.

Note that public functions of the current contract can be used both as an
internal and as an external function. To use f as an internal function,
just use f, if you want to use its external form, use this.f.

Additionally, public (or external) functions also have a special member called selector,
which returns the ABI function selector:

pragmasolidity^0.4.16;libraryArrayUtils{// internal functions can be used in internal library functions because// they will be part of the same code contextfunctionmap(uint[]memoryself,function(uint)purereturns(uint)f)internalpurereturns(uint[]memoryr){r=newuint[](self.length);for(uinti=0;i<self.length;i++){r[i]=f(self[i]);}}functionreduce(uint[]memoryself,function(uint,uint)purereturns(uint)f)internalpurereturns(uintr){r=self[0];for(uinti=1;i<self.length;i++){r=f(r,self[i]);}}functionrange(uintlength)internalpurereturns(uint[]memoryr){r=newuint[](length);for(uinti=0;i<r.length;i++){r[i]=i;}}}contractPyramid{usingArrayUtilsfor*;functionpyramid(uintl)publicpurereturns(uint){returnArrayUtils.range(l).map(square).reduce(sum);}functionsquare(uintx)internalpurereturns(uint){returnx*x;}functionsum(uintx,uinty)internalpurereturns(uint){returnx+y;}}

Another example that uses external function types:

pragmasolidity^0.4.21;contractOracle{structRequest{bytesdata;function(bytesmemory)externalcallback;}Request[]requests;eventNewRequest(uint);functionquery(bytesdata,function(bytesmemory)externalcallback)public{requests.push(Request(data,callback));emitNewRequest(requests.length-1);}functionreply(uintrequestID,bytesresponse)public{// Here goes the check that the reply comes from a trusted sourcerequests[requestID].callback(response);}}contractOracleUser{Oracleconstantoracle=Oracle(0x1234567);// known contractfunctionbuySomething(){oracle.query("USD",this.oracleResponse);}functionoracleResponse(bytesresponse)public{require(msg.sender==address(oracle));// Use the data}}

Complex types, i.e. types which do not always fit into 256 bits have to be handled
more carefully than the value-types we have already seen. Since copying
them can be quite expensive, we have to think about whether we want them to be
stored in memory (which is not persisting) or storage (where the state
variables are held).

Every complex type, i.e. arrays and structs, has an additional
annotation, the “data location”, about whether it is stored in memory or in storage. Depending on the
context, there is always a default, but it can be overridden by appending
either storage or memory to the type. The default for function parameters (including return parameters) is memory, the default for local variables is storage and the location is forced
to storage for state variables (obviously).

There is also a third data location, calldata, which is a non-modifiable,
non-persistent area where function arguments are stored. Function parameters
(not return parameters) of external functions are forced to calldata and
behave mostly like memory.

Data locations are important because they change how assignments behave:
assignments between storage and memory and also to a state variable (even from other state variables)
always create an independent copy.
Assignments to local storage variables only assign a reference though, and
this reference always points to the state variable even if the latter is changed
in the meantime.
On the other hand, assignments from a memory stored reference type to another
memory-stored reference type do not create a copy.

pragmasolidity^0.4.0;contractC{uint[]x;// the data location of x is storage// the data location of memoryArray is memoryfunctionf(uint[]memoryArray)public{x=memoryArray;// works, copies the whole array to storagevary=x;// works, assigns a pointer, data location of y is storagey[7];// fine, returns the 8th elementy.length=2;// fine, modifies x through ydeletex;// fine, clears the array, also modifies y// The following does not work; it would need to create a new temporary /// unnamed array in storage, but storage is "statically" allocated:// y = memoryArray;// This does not work either, since it would "reset" the pointer, but there// is no sensible location it could point to.// delete y;g(x);// calls g, handing over a reference to xh(x);// calls h and creates an independent, temporary copy in memory}functiong(uint[]storagestorageArray)internal{}functionh(uint[]memoryArray)public{}}

Arrays can have a compile-time fixed size or they can be dynamic.
For storage arrays, the element type can be arbitrary (i.e. also other
arrays, mappings or structs). For memory arrays, it cannot be a mapping and
has to be an ABI type if it is an argument of a publicly-visible function.

An array of fixed size k and element type T is written as T[k],
an array of dynamic size as T[]. As an example, an array of 5 dynamic
arrays of uint is uint[][5] (note that the notation is reversed when
compared to some other languages). To access the second uint in the
third dynamic array, you use x[2][1] (indices are zero-based and
access works in the opposite way of the declaration, i.e. x[2]
shaves off one level in the type from the right).

Variables of type bytes and string are special arrays. A bytes is similar to byte[],
but it is packed tightly in calldata. string is equal to bytes but does not allow
length or index access (for now).

So bytes should always be preferred over byte[] because it is cheaper.

Note

If you want to access the byte-representation of a string s, use
bytes(s).length / bytes(s)[7]='x';. Keep in mind
that you are accessing the low-level bytes of the UTF-8 representation,
and not the individual characters!

It is possible to mark arrays public and have Solidity create a getter.
The numeric index will become a required parameter for the getter.

The type of an array literal is a memory array of fixed size whose base
type is the common type of the given elements. The type of [1,2,3] is
uint8[3]memory, because the type of each of these constants is uint8.
Because of that, it was necessary to convert the first element in the example
above to uint. Note that currently, fixed size memory arrays cannot
be assigned to dynamically-sized memory arrays, i.e. the following is not
possible:

// This will not compile.pragmasolidity^0.4.0;contractC{functionf()public{// The next line creates a type error because uint[3] memory// cannot be converted to uint[] memory.uint[]x=[uint(1),3,4];}}

It is planned to remove this restriction in the future but currently creates
some complications because of how arrays are passed in the ABI.

Arrays have a length member to hold their number of elements.
Dynamic arrays can be resized in storage (not in memory) by changing the
.length member. This does not happen automatically when attempting to access elements outside the current length. The size of memory arrays is fixed (but dynamic, i.e. it can depend on runtime parameters) once they are created.

push:

Dynamic storage arrays and bytes (not string) have a member function called push that can be used to append an element at the end of the array. The function returns the new length.

Warning

It is not yet possible to use arrays of arrays in external functions.

Warning

Due to limitations of the EVM, it is not possible to return
dynamic content from external function calls. The function f in
contractC{functionf()returns(uint[]){...}} will return
something if called from web3.js, but not if called from Solidity.

The only workaround for now is to use large statically-sized arrays.

pragmasolidity^0.4.16;contractArrayContract{uint[2**20]m_aLotOfIntegers;// Note that the following is not a pair of dynamic arrays but a// dynamic array of pairs (i.e. of fixed size arrays of length two).bool[2][]m_pairsOfFlags;// newPairs is stored in memory - the default for function argumentsfunctionsetAllFlagPairs(bool[2][]newPairs)public{// assignment to a storage array replaces the complete arraym_pairsOfFlags=newPairs;}functionsetFlagPair(uintindex,boolflagA,boolflagB)public{// access to a non-existing index will throw an exceptionm_pairsOfFlags[index][0]=flagA;m_pairsOfFlags[index][1]=flagB;}functionchangeFlagArraySize(uintnewSize)public{// if the new size is smaller, removed array elements will be clearedm_pairsOfFlags.length=newSize;}functionclear()public{// these clear the arrays completelydeletem_pairsOfFlags;deletem_aLotOfIntegers;// identical effect herem_pairsOfFlags.length=0;}bytesm_byteData;functionbyteArrays(bytesdata)public{// byte arrays ("bytes") are different as they are stored without padding,// but can be treated identical to "uint8[]"m_byteData=data;m_byteData.length+=7;m_byteData[3]=byte(8);deletem_byteData[2];}functionaddFlag(bool[2]flag)publicreturns(uint){returnm_pairsOfFlags.push(flag);}functioncreateMemoryArray(uintsize)publicpurereturns(bytes){// Dynamic memory arrays are created using `new`:uint[2][]memoryarrayOfPairs=newuint[2][](size);// Create a dynamic byte array:bytesmemoryb=newbytes(200);for(uinti=0;i<b.length;i++)b[i]=byte(i);returnb;}}

Solidity provides a way to define new types in the form of structs, which is
shown in the following example:

pragmasolidity^0.4.11;contractCrowdFunding{// Defines a new type with two fields.structFunder{addressaddr;uintamount;}structCampaign{addressbeneficiary;uintfundingGoal;uintnumFunders;uintamount;mapping(uint=>Funder)funders;}uintnumCampaigns;mapping(uint=>Campaign)campaigns;functionnewCampaign(addressbeneficiary,uintgoal)publicreturns(uintcampaignID){campaignID=numCampaigns++;// campaignID is return variable// Creates new struct and saves in storage. We leave out the mapping type.campaigns[campaignID]=Campaign(beneficiary,goal,0,0);}functioncontribute(uintcampaignID)publicpayable{Campaignstoragec=campaigns[campaignID];// Creates a new temporary memory struct, initialised with the given values// and copies it over to storage.// Note that you can also use Funder(msg.sender, msg.value) to initialise.c.funders[c.numFunders++]=Funder({addr:msg.sender,amount:msg.value});c.amount+=msg.value;}functioncheckGoalReached(uintcampaignID)publicreturns(boolreached){Campaignstoragec=campaigns[campaignID];if(c.amount<c.fundingGoal)returnfalse;uintamount=c.amount;c.amount=0;c.beneficiary.transfer(amount);returntrue;}}

The contract does not provide the full functionality of a crowdfunding
contract, but it contains the basic concepts necessary to understand structs.
Struct types can be used inside mappings and arrays and they can itself
contain mappings and arrays.

It is not possible for a struct to contain a member of its own type,
although the struct itself can be the value type of a mapping member.
This restriction is necessary, as the size of the struct has to be finite.

Note how in all the functions, a struct type is assigned to a local variable
(of the default storage data location).
This does not copy the struct but only stores a reference so that assignments to
members of the local variable actually write to the state.

Of course, you can also directly access the members of the struct without
assigning it to a local variable, as in
campaigns[campaignID].amount=0.

Mapping types are declared as mapping(_KeyType=>_ValueType).
Here _KeyType can be almost any type except for a mapping, a dynamically sized array, a contract, an enum and a struct.
_ValueType can actually be any type, including mappings.

Mappings can be seen as hash tables which are virtually initialized such that
every possible key exists and is mapped to a value whose byte-representation is
all zeros: a type’s default value. The similarity ends here, though: The key data is not actually stored
in a mapping, only its keccak256 hash used to look up the value.

Because of this, mappings do not have a length or a concept of a key or value being “set”.

Mappings are only allowed for state variables (or as storage reference types
in internal functions).

It is possible to mark mappings public and have Solidity create a getter.
The _KeyType will become a required parameter for the getter and it will
return _ValueType.

The _ValueType can be a mapping too. The getter will have one parameter
for each _KeyType, recursively.

If a is an LValue (i.e. a variable or something that can be assigned to), the following operators are available as shorthands:

a+=e is equivalent to a=a+e. The operators -=, *=, /=, %=, |=, &= and ^= are defined accordingly. a++ and a-- are equivalent to a+=1 / a-=1 but the expression itself still has the previous value of a. In contrast, --a and ++a have the same effect on a but return the value after the change.

deletea assigns the initial value for the type to a. I.e. for integers it is equivalent to a=0, but it can also be used on arrays, where it assigns a dynamic array of length zero or a static array of the same length with all elements reset. For structs, it assigns a struct with all members reset.

delete has no effect on whole mappings (as the keys of mappings may be arbitrary and are generally unknown). So if you delete a struct, it will reset all members that are not mappings and also recurse into the members unless they are mappings. However, individual keys and what they map to can be deleted.

It is important to note that deletea really behaves like an assignment to a, i.e. it stores a new object in a.

pragmasolidity^0.4.0;contractDeleteExample{uintdata;uint[]dataArray;functionf()public{uintx=data;deletex;// sets x to 0, does not affect datadeletedata;// sets data to 0, does not affect x which still holds a copyuint[]storagey=dataArray;deletedataArray;// this sets dataArray.length to zero, but as uint[] is a complex object, also// y is affected which is an alias to the storage object// On the other hand: "delete y" is not valid, as assignments to local variables// referencing storage objects can only be made from existing storage objects.}}

If an operator is applied to different types, the compiler tries to
implicitly convert one of the operands to the type of the other (the same is
true for assignments). In general, an implicit conversion between value-types
is possible if it
makes sense semantically and no information is lost: uint8 is convertible to
uint16 and int128 to int256, but int8 is not convertible to uint256
(because uint256 cannot hold e.g. -1).
Furthermore, unsigned integers can be converted to bytes of the same or larger
size, but not vice-versa. Any type that can be converted to uint160 can also
be converted to address.

If the compiler does not allow implicit conversion but you know what you are
doing, an explicit type conversion is sometimes possible. Note that this may
give you some unexpected behaviour so be sure to test to ensure that the
result is what you want! Take the following example where you are converting
a negative int8 to a uint:

int8y=-3;uintx=uint(y);

At the end of this code snippet, x will have the value 0xfffff..fd (64 hex
characters), which is -3 in the two’s complement representation of 256 bits.

If a type is explicitly converted to a smaller type, higher-order bits are
cut off:

For convenience, it is not always necessary to explicitly specify the type of a
variable, the compiler automatically infers it from the type of the first
expression that is assigned to the variable:

uint24x=0x123;vary=x;

Here, the type of y will be uint24. Using var is not possible for function
parameters or return parameters.

Warning

The type is only deduced from the first assignment, so
the loop in the following snippet is infinite, as i will have the type
uint8 and the highest value of this type is smaller than 2000.
for(vari=0;i<2000;i++){...}